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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Online "Grounding": A response to Facebook Parenting

A few days ago, a video was posted on YouTube that went viral within a day or so.
To sum it up, a father of a 15 year old girl named Hannah found out that she had ranted about her parents on her Facebook page and blocked them, thinking he wouldn't find out. Too bad her dad's worked in IT for years. Needless to say, he found out about her posting to all her friends about how she was treated like a "slave" because she had chores and demanded that she get paid for them... well, that and a lot of other things. You can watch the full video here:

Now, I understand that she is only 15 (I remember when I was 15 years old like it was yesterday) and may be going through a lot at that age. But in my honest opinion, that really is no way to talk about your parents. What angers me the most, however, is the fact that she didn't even directly say these things to her parents. No, she chose to completely humiliate her entire family by letting hundreds of her "friends" know about her personal situation. And for what just cause? I can't think of what was going through her head at the time.

About the punishment. As in, the whole "publicizing your daughter's life and angry ramblings to millions of people all over the world, while conveniently making your Facebook profile easy to find". At first, although I was shocked at the girl's be havior, I was rather iffy onwhether what her dad did was really fair. Take it from me, I'm no parenting expert but once a video like this goes viral, there really is no turning back. I wonder how this might affect her life?

At the moment, I am assuming she is probably furious at her parents. But I do truly believe that it will benefit her overall in the long run. Help her become a better person. And kids really do need to know how to treat their parents (and others) with respect and gratitude. Trust me, I myself hated doing chores but I realized my parents' selfless contribution to me was so much more that it really was the least I could do.

And to end on a happy note, I hope everyone enjoyed Valentine's Day yesterday! I think my stomach is still feeling a bit hurty from all the chocolates but... hopefully it gets better.